Matthew Cousins

At todays show the top end of the 0 gauge market seemed to be going strong with some really nice RTR locos now available. The Golden Age Merchant Navy (inc rebuilt) locos are really very good. Also having had another look at their purple/blue A4 has helped me make up my mind to put this livery on my kitbash A4 Trouble is that I have Champagne tastes, but only the money for a bottle of stout!

Thanks for the links, sorry to be so ignorant, I suppose that our popular gauges of mixed imperial and metric are a bit wierd. The Terrier is a very nicely made loco, so I can see the attraction.

Whilst at the Seaford show an old couple asked me if I could help sell some of their brothers old locos. These included some S scale locos, which is a scale that I haven't seen before. I thought that I would post this photo to show the comparison of 0 gauge 00 gauge and the intermediate S gauge, which is 5mm /Ft ? The model is of course the well known Terrier with the S gauge loco being the A1X next to 'Brighton' It would be interesting to know if anyone on RMWeb does S scale and might be interested in these locos. The nickel silver A1 nearest the camera is a 4mm kit that was made in the 1970's by GW Models, who now make rivet tools and other builders aids.

That is very evocative, I have always liked the blue Pullman, as it seemed to stand out amongst the smoky murk of the Midlands, surrounded by steam locos. These images are very good, makes me want to get the paintbrushes out for a new picture!

Hi James, I wonder if a base colour that is a bit nearer to the solebar colour might be worth a try, but the result that you have achieved is a good effort.

Nice looking loco, that inspires me to dig out the kit of bits that I bought some time back to make an 0 gauge one.

Well done, a good build and if there were 7mm plastic bodied locos to kit bash, it would be really good to see what you did in the larger scale, as your results in 4mm are so good.

Well done, a neat job - even though I was never happy with the Thompson pacifics..

An intriguing and well executed rebuild, which really emulates what Thompson did to the final four V2's - well done.

with this close-up I notice that the tank vinyl is a bit badly applied, good job I've got some spares!

Having the sun out today meant that I could get a better pic of the vinyls, so here we are. With a bit of varnish and weathering this could be a reasonable solution for me, as I'm not that picky about uber details. This solution is not for he purist, but I really don't have the time for learning tedious lining techniques - too busy.

Yes, when the light is better I shall take another pic.

I bought a 7mm G5 that had no lining and poor transfers, so using my loco profiles computer images I thought that I would create a set of vinyls for it, as my local printer can now print sticky backed vinyls that will be able to take spray varnish. They will need to be fudged in a bit and the loco weatherd to disguise the printed matter, but thought it hadn't turned out too badly. I have also done a set for my Stroudley liveried Terrier, but not stuck them on yet as that will take a lot more effort. Pic show the loco before any disguising work has been done, but is a bit grainy due to no real daylight today in Sussex. The footplate lining will be done with the next printing

Superb, Dave, a really appealing prototype and excellent model making.

Interesting view about the front end of an A4 being used - the main stand out difference is in the slope and the length of the chimney which appears a good bit longer on a P2. When I asked my friend Peter Relf to tackle a 7mm P2 kit for me, he took a long time looking at the front end and in the end decided that there was no suitable proprietry casting in 7mm that did the job, so he scratch built one using milliput to get the final detail sloping curved front. With regard to yours being a long build, I've now been waiting 4 years whilst Peter has felt that he might as well have scratch built it from the start! Good luck with your build, I look forward to seeing the pics.

How about post war BR blue? They might have got this as 8P locos.

I wonder if the Bluebell could borrow this one whilst Sir Archie is out, meanwhile good luck with this one, I hope the usual boiler nasties have been well sorted....

Interesting... I don't think that I have seen the last atlantic modelled like this before and I'm looking forward to getting an Ivatt Atlantic in 0 gauge. Well done for a nice different piece of modelling.

Interesting lining, is it BR mixed traffic, or have I lost the plot and missed what line this was used on? very nice model

Great piece of building, plus the crew are particularly well painted.

I really like locos from this era and always found this type intriguing, but not quite as elegant as Stroudleys examples of 0-4-2's (although by Southern days they had lost most of their elegance with Marsh modifications). I'm still trying to complete my Lyons class 0-4-2, with help from a friend and shall post pics soon.

Sorry that you ended up with a sore throat Jon, many thanks for your help in setting up (and dismantling) my stand, as well as yours. I managed to get set up in that van again by 6.30 and had a good day (for a change) at the War weekend, Barry Freeman came down for the day and will be back again for the Model Railway weekend 7th/8th July if you're interested. Thanks again for your help, M.

Hi, I just thought that I would clarify a misunderstanding on one of our contributors, who suggested that I had got the tender front wrong on this A4 build. He said that the streamlined tenders were straight at the front and not curved in. Well in fact all the corridor tenders were curved in at the front not just the 1928 built and modified. The Corridor type tender fills out the loading gauge, so that any handrail on the outside would be out of gauge, so all the fronts had to be curved in to mount the handrail. Only the streamlined NON corridor tenders were straight at the front as on Mallard as preserved. People may also note that ALL of the Bachmann 0 gauge NON corridor tenders are the wrong width as they are the same width as the corridor type and should be narrower. I found that an old Skinley drawing is responsible for this error and when I bought an A3 that had been built to these drawings with a wide non-corridor tender, I had to convert the tender, by adding the corridor details, see pic attached. I hope that this clears things up, but sorry to all those with Bachmann 0 gauge A3's, who now should set about narrowing their non corridor and GN coal rail tenders!Thanks for the comment, it was useful I think to air the subject which is confusing, as Bachmann know to their cost!

I completely agree that neither Hit or whoever holds the rights to the Thomas brand has any right to stop anyone else putting a face on an engine. We had all this argument at The Bluebell Railway and ended up abandoning Thomas days even thuogh the Rev W Awdry wrote a book specifically about our railway and its first engine Stepney, only to have Britt Allcroft tell us that we had an engine that 'resembled' the Stepney of the books!! at which point we said that it had been Stepney since 1875!! and we had any rights we liked to the engine. At this point the Stepney books mysteriously didn't seem to be stocked any more - we should have charged them for the rights to all our engines, which now proliferate in books and models, but we're not like that. It hasn't stopped me from putting faces on our engines in pictures that I paint and I've also made and painted the faces that we used on the full size engines. Anyway the kids still come to look for Stepney even though he hasn't got a face and he's gone black for the past couple of years. By the way I really like Hamilton Ellis' 'Fast Goods' appropriate as 'Fast' women were a bit on the naughty side and I daresay that was what he was angling at.

Looking good, how will you fix the backhead? Will it still be deatachable or go in at the last and be permanently glued?